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American  C^atactet 

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J^  merimn  (J^t^atacttv 

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ptofeeeot  ofOtamatic  Ctferofuce 

in  €o(utn6ia  Vkniveteit^ 

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Ulew  igoFk 

(tfjomae  V-  €to\9ttt\  ^o. 

pw&tietiew 

Copyright,  1906,  by  Thomas  Y.  Crowell  &  Co. 
Published,  September,  1906 


D.  B.  Updike,  The  Merrymount  Press,  Boston 


This  Address  was  delivered  before  the  Phi 
Beta  Kappa  of  Columbia  University  in  June, 
1905;  and  it  was  repeated  at  Rutgers  College 
on  Charter  Day  in  November,  1905 


ivi619555 


American  OC  ^aracter 


IN  a  volume  recording  a  series  of  talks 
with  Tolstoi,  published  by  a  French  wri- 
ter in  the  final  months  of  1904,  we  are  told 
that  the  Russian  novelist  thought  the  Dukho- 
bors  had  attained  to  a  perfected  life,  in  that 
they  were  simple,  free  from  envy,  wrath  and 
ambition,  detestiog  violence,  refraining  from 
theft  and  murder,  and  seeking  ever  to  do  good. 
Then  the  Parisian  interviewer  asked  which  of 
the  peoples  of  the  world  seemed  most  remote 
from  the  perfection  to  which  the  Dukhobors 
had  elevated  themselves;  and  when  Tolstoi  re- 
turned that  he  had  given  no  thought  to  this 
question,  the  French  correspondent  suggested 
that  we  Americans  deserved  to  be  held  up  to 
scorn  as  the  least  worthy  of  nations. 
The  tolerant  Tolstoi  asked  his  visitor  why  he 
thought  so  ill  of  us ;  and  the  journalist  of  Paris 
then  put  forth  the  opinion  that  we  Americans 
are  ¥a  people  terribly  practical,  avid  of  plea- 


^tnetican  sure,  systematically  hostile  to  all  idealism.  The 
Character  ambition  of  the  American's  heart,  the  passion 
of  his  life,  is  money;  and  it  is  rather  a  delight 
in  the  conquest  and  possession  of  money  than 
in  the  use  of  it.  The  Americans  ignore  the  arts ; 
they  despise  disinterested  beauty.  And  now, 
moreover,  they  are  imperialists.  They  could 
have  remained  peaceful  without  danger  to 
their  national  existence ;  but  they  had  to  have 
a  fleet  and  an  army.  They  set  out  after  Spain, 
and  attacked  her;  and  now  they  begin  to  defy 
Europe.  Is  there  not  something  scandalous  in 
this  revelation  of  the  conquering  appetite  in  a 
new  people  with  no  hereditary  predisposition 
toward  war?" 
It  is  to  the  credit  of  the  French  correspond- 
ent that  after  setting  down  this  fervid  arraign- 
ment, he  was  honest  enough  to  record  Tolstoi's 
dissent.  But  although  he  dissented,  the  great 
Russian  expressed  no  surprise  at  the  virulence 
of  this  diatribe.  No  doubt  it  voiced  an  opinion 
familiarized  to  him  of  late  by  many  a  news- 
paper of  France  and  of  Germany.  Fortunately 
for  us,  the  assertion  that  foreign  nations  are  a 
contemporaneous  posterity  is  not  quite  true. 
Yet  the  opinion  of  foreigners,  even  when  most 
at  fault,  must  have  its  value  for  us  as  a  useful 
corrective  of  conceit.  We  ought  to  be  proud  of 


our  country;  but  we  need  not  be  vain  about  it.  Jimcticatl 
Indeed,  it  would  be  difficult  for  the  most  pa-  d^atactct 
triotic  of  us  to  find  any  satisfaction  in  the  fig- 
ure of  the  typical  American  which  apparently 
exists  in  the  mind  of  most  Europeans,  and 
which  seems  to  be  a  composite  photograph  of 
the  backwoodsman  of  Cooper,  the  negro  of 
Mrs.  Stowe,  and  the  Mississippi  River-folk 
of  Mark  Twain,  modified  perhaps  by  more 
vivid  memories  of  Buffalo  Bill's  Wild  West. 
Surely  this  is  a  strange  monster;  and  we  need 
not  wonder  that  foreigners  feel  towards  it  as 
Voltaire  felt  toward  the  prophet  Habakkuk, 
—  whom  he  declared  to  be  "capable  of  any- 
thing." 
It  has  seemed  advisable  to  quote  here  what 
the  Parisian  journalist  said  of  us,  not  because 
he  himself  is  a  person  of  consequence— in- 
deed, he  is  so  obscure  that  there  is  no  need 
even  to  mention  his  name  —  but  because  he  has 
had  the  courage  to  attempt  what  Burke  de- 
clared to  be  impossible,— to  draw  an  indict- 
ment against  a  whole  nation.  It  would  be  easy 
to  retort  on  him  in  kind,  for,  unfortunately,— 
and  to  the  grief  of  all  her  friends,— France  has 
laid  herself  open  to  accusations  as  sweeping 
and  as  violent.  It  would  be  easy  to  dismiss  the 
man  himself  as  one  whose  outlook  on  the 

3 


Jitnetican  world  was  so  narrow  that  it  seemed  to  be  little 
CfjCitactct  more  than  what  he  could  get  through  a  chance 
slit  in  the  wall  of  his  own  self-sufficiency.  It 
would  be  easy  to  answer  him  in  either  of  these 
fashions,  but  what  is  easy  is  rarely  worth  while ; 
and  it  is  wiser  to  weigh  what  he  said  and  to 
see  if  we  cannot  find  our  profit  in  it. 
Sifting  the  essential  charges  from  out  the 
mass  of  his  malevolent  accusation,  we  find 
this  Frenchman  alleging  first,  that  we  Ameri- 
cans care  chiefly  for  making  money;  second, 
that  we  are  hostile  to  art  and  to  all  forms  of 
beauty;  and  thirdly,  that  we  are  devoid  of 
ideals.  These  three  allegations  may  well  be 
considered  one  by  one,  beginning  with  the  as- 
sertion that  we  are  mere  money-makers. 

II 

Now,  in  so  far  as  this  Frenchman's  belief  is  but 
an  exaggeration  of  the  saying^of  Napoleon's, 
that  the  English  were  a  nation  of  shopkeep- 
ers, we  need  not  wince,  for  the  Emperor  of 
the  French  found  to  his  cost  that  those  same 
English  shopkeepers  had  a  stout  stomach  for 
fighting.  Nor  need  we  regret  that  we  can  keep 
shop  profitably,  in  these  days  when  the  doors 
of  the  bankers'  vaults  are  the  real  gates  of 
the  Temple  of  Janus,  war  being  impossible 
4 


until  they  open.  There  is  no  reason  for  alarm  JUmeticati 
or  for  apology  so  long  as  our  shopkeeping  (Z^atactct 
does  not  cramp  our  muscle  or  curb  our  spirit, 
for,  as  Bacon  declared  three  centuries  ago, 
"walled  towns,  stored  arsenals  and  armories, 
goodly  races  of  horse,  chariots  of  war,  ele- 
phants, ordnance,  artillery  and  the  like,  all 
this  is  but  a  sheep  in  a  lion's  skin,  except  the 
breed  and  disposition  of  the  people  be  stout 
and  warlike." 
Even  the  hostile  French  traveller  did  not  ac- 
cuse us  of  any  flabbiness  of  fiber;  indeed,  he 
declaimed  especially  against  our  "conquering 
appetite,"  which  seemed  to  him  scandalous 
"  in  a  new  people  with  no  hereditary  predis- 
position toward  war."  But  here  he  fell  into  a 
common  blunder ;  the  United  States  may  be  a 
new  nation— although  as  a  fact  the  stars-and- 
stripes  is  now  older  than  the  tricolor  of  France, 
the  union-jack  of  Great  Britain  and  the  stan- 
dards of  those  new-comers  among  the  nations, 
Italy  and  Germany,— the  United  States  may 
be  a  new  nation,  but  the  people  here  have  had 
as  many  ancestors  as  the  population  of  any 
other  country.  The  people  here,  moreover, 
have  "a  hereditary  predisposition  toward 
war,"  or  at  least  toward  adventure,  since  they 
are,  every  man  of  them,  descended  from  some 

5 


Jitnetican  European  more  venturesome  than  his  fellows, 
Character  readier  to  risk  the  perils  of  the  Western  Ocean 
and  bolder  to  front  the  unknown  dangers  of 
an  unknown  land.  The  warlike  temper,  the 
aggressiveness,  the  imperialistic  sentiment,— 
these  are  in  us  no  new  development  of  unex- 
pected ambition;  and  they  ought  not  to  sur- 
prise any  one  familiar  with  the  way  in  which 
our  forefathers  grasped  this  Atlantic  coast 
first,  then  thrust  themselves  across  the  AUe- 
ghanies,  spread  abroad  to  the  Mississippi,  and 
reached  out  at  last  to  the  Rockies  and  to  the 
Pacific.  The  lust  of  adventure  may  be  danger- 
ous, but  it  is  no  new  thing;  it  is  in  our  blood, 
and  we  must  reckon  with  it. 
Perhaps  it  is  because  "the  breed  and  disposi- 
tion of  the  people'*  is  "stout  and  warlike"  that 
our  shopkeeping  has  been  successful  enough 
to  awaken  envious  admiration  among  other 
races  whose  energy  may  have  been  relaxed  of 
late.  After  all,  the  arts  of  war  and  the  arts  of 
peace  are  not  so  unlike;  and  in  either  a  tri- 
umph can  be  won  only  by  an  imagination 
strong  enough  to  foresee  and  to  divine  what  is 
hidden  from  the  weakling.  We  are  a  trading 
community,  after  all  and  above  all,  even  if  we 
come  of  fighting  stock.  We  are  a  trading  com- 
munity, just  as  Athens  was,  and  Venice  and 
6 


Florence.  And  like  the  men  of  these  earlier  Jlmetican 
commonwealths,  the  men  of  the  United  States  Character 
are  trying  to  make  money.  They  are  striving 
to  make  money  not  solely  to  amass  riches,  but 
partly  because  having  money  is  the  outward 
and  visible  sign  of  success,— because  it  is  the 
most  obvious  measure  of  accomplishment. 
In  his  talk  with  Tolstoi  our  French  critic  re- 
vealed an  unexpected  insight  when  he  asserted 
that  the  passion  of  American  life  was  not  so 
much  the  use  of  money  as  a  delight  in  the  con- 
quest of  it.  Many  an  American  man  of  affairs 
would  admit  without  hesitation  that  he  would 
rather  make  half  a  million  dollars  than  inherit 
a  million.  It  is  the  process  he  enjoys,  rather 
than  the  result;  it  is  the  tough  tussle  in  the 
open  market  which  gives  him  the  keenest  plea- 
sure, and  not  the  idle  contemplation  of  wealth 
safely  stored  away.  He  girds  himself  for  battle 
and  fights  for  his  own  hand ;  he  is  the  son  and 
the  grandson  of  the  stalwart  adventurers  who 
came  from  the  Old  World  to  face  the  chances 
of  the  new.  This  is  why  he  is  unwilling  to  retire 
as  men  are  wont  to  do  in  Europe  when  their  for- 
tunes are  made.  Merely  to  have  money  does 
not  greatly  delight  him— although  he  would 
regret  not  having  it ;  but  what  does  delight  him 
unceasingly  is  the  fun  of  making  it. 

7 


IPlmctican  The  money  itself  often  he  does  not  know  what 
C^atactet  to  do  with;  and  he  can  find  no  more  selfish  use 
for  it  than  to  give  it  away.  He  seems  to  recog- 
nize that  his  making  it  was  in  some  measure 
due  to  the  unconscious  assistance  of  the  com- 
munity as  a  whole ;  and  he  feels  it  his  duty  to 
do  something  for  the  people  among  whom  he 
lives.  It  must  be  noted  that  the  people  them- 
selves also  expect  this  from  him ;  they  expect 
him  sooner  or  later  to  pay  his  footing.  As  a  re- 
sult of  this  pressure  of  public  opinion  and  of 
his  own  lack  of  interest  in  money  itself,  he 
gives  freely.  In  time  he  comes  to  find  pleasure 
in  this  as  well;  and  he  applies  his  business 
sagacity  to  his  benefactions.  Nothing  is  more 
characteristic  of  modern  American  life  than 
this  pouring  out  of  private  wealth  for  public 
service.  Nothing  remotely  resembling  it  is  to 
be  seen  now  in  any  country  of  the  Old  World ; 
and  not  even  in  Athens  in  its  noblest  days  was 
there  a  larger-handed  lavishness  of  the  indi- 
vidual for  the  benefit  of  the  community. 
Again,  in  no  country  of  the  Old  World  is  the 
prestige  of  wealth  less  powerful  than  it  is  here. 
This,  of  course,  the  foreigner  fails  to  perceive; 
he  does  not  discover  that  it  is  not  the  man  who 
happens  to  possess  money  that  we  regard  with 
admiration  but  the  man  who  is  making  money, 
8 


and  thereby  proving  his  efficiency  and  indi-  JJmctican 
rectly  benefiting  the  community.  To  many  it  Character 
may  sound  like  an  insufferable  paradox  to  as- 
sert that  nowhere  in  the  civilized  world  to-day 
is  money  itself  of  less  weight  than  here  in  the 
United  States;  but  the  broader  his  opportunity 
the  more  likely  is  an  honest  observer  to  come 
to  this  unexpected  conclusion.  Fortunes  are 
made  in  a  day  almost,  and  they  may  fade  away 
in  a  night ;  as  the  Yankee  proverb  put  it  pithily, 
"  it*s  only  three  generations  from  shirt-sleeves 
to  shirt-sleeves. "  Wealth  is  likely  to  lack  some- 
thing of  its  glamor  in  a  land  where  well-being 
is  widely  diffused  and  where  a  large  proportion 
of  the  population  have  either  had  a  fortune  and 
lost  it,  or  else  expect  to  gain  one  in  the  imme- 
diate future. 
Probably  also  there  is  no  country  which  now 
contains  more  men  who  do  not  greatly  care 
for  large  gains  and  who  have  gladly  given  up 
money-making  for  some  other  occupation  they 
found  more  profitable  for  themselves.  These 
are  the  men  like  Thoreau—in  whose  "Wal- 
den,"  now  half  a  century  old,  we  can  find  an 
emphatic  declaration  of  all  the  latest  doctrines 
of  the  simple  life.  We  have  all  heard  of  Agas- 
siz,  — best  of  Americans,  even  though  he  was 
born  in  another  republic,— how  he  repelled  the 

9 


JTmertcan  proffer  of  large  terms  for  a  series  of  lectures, 
(Character  with  the  answer  that  he  had  no  time  to  make 
money.  Closely  akin  was  the  reply  of  a  famous 
machinist  in  response  to  an  inquiry  as  to  what 
he  had  been  doing,  — to  the  effect  that  he  had 
accomplished  nothing  of  late,  — '*  we  have  just 
been  building  engines  and  making  money,  and 
I  *m  about  tired  of  it."  And  a  few  years  ago  a 
college  professor  of  known  executive  ability 
declined  the  presidency  of  a  trust  company 
which  offered  him  a  salary  at  least  five  times 
what  he  was  receiving.  There  are  not  a  few 
men  to-day  in  these  toiling  United  States  who 
hold  with  Ben  Jonson  that  **money  never  made 
any  man  rich,  —  but  his  mind." 

But  while  this  is  true,  while  there  are  some 
men  among  us  who  care  little  for  money,  and 
while  there  are  many  who  care  chiefly  for  the 
making  of  it,  ready  to  share  it  when  made  with 
their  fellow-citizens,  candor  compels  the  ad- 
mission that  there  are  also  not  a  few  who  are 
greedy  and  grasping,  selfish  and  shameless, 
and  who  stand  forward,  conspicuous  and  un- 
scrupulous, as  if  to  justify  to  the  full  the  as- 
persions which  foreigners  cast  upon  us.  Al- 
though these  men  manage  for  the  most  part 
to  keep  within  the  letter  of  the  law,  their  mo- 
rality is  that  of  the  wrecker  and  of  the  pirate. 

10 


It  is  a  symptom  of  health  in  the  body  politic  !Mtnctican 
that  the  proposal  has  been  made  to  inflict  so-  Character 
cial  ostracism  upon  the  criminal  rich.  We  need 
to  stiffen  our  conscience  and  to  set  up  a  loftier 
standard  of  social  intercourse,  refusing  to  fel- 
lowship with  the  men  who  make  their  money 
by  overriding  the  law  or  by  undermining  it- 
just  as  we  should  have  declined  the  friendship 
of  Captain  Kidd  before  he  had  buried  his  stolen 
treasure. 
In  the  immediate  future  these  men  will  be 
made  to  feel  that  they  are  under  the  ban  of 
public  opinion.  One  sign  of  an  acuter  sensitive- 
ness is  the  recent  outcry  against  the  accept- 
ance of  "tainted  money"  for  the  support  of 
good  works.  Although  it  is  wise  always  to  give 
a  good  deed  the  credit  of  a  good  motive,  yet  it 
is  impossible  sometimes  not  to  suspect  that 
certain  large  gifts  have  an  aspect  of  "con- 
science money."  Some  of  them  seem  to  be  the 
result  of  a  desire  to  divert  public  attention  from 
the  evil  way  in  which  the  money  was  made  to 
the  nobler  manner  in  which  it  is  spent.  They 
appear  to  be  the  attempt  of  a  social  outlaw  to 
buy  his  peace  with  the  community.  Apparently 
there  are  rich  men  among  us,  who,  having  sold 
their  honor  for  a  price,  would  now  gladly  give 
up  the  half  of  their  fortunes  to  get  it  back. 


Jimctican  Candor  compels  the  admission  also  that  by 
(Character  the  side  of  the  criminal  rich  there  exists  the 
less  noxious  but  more  offensive  class  of  the  idle 
rich,  who  lead  lives  of  wasteful  luxury  and  of 
empty  excitement.  When  the  French  reporter 
who  talked  with  Tolstoi  called  us  Americans 
"avid  of  pleasure"  it  was  this  little  group  he 
had  in  mind,  as  he  may  have  seen  the  members 
of  it  splurging  about  in  Paris,  squandering  and 
self-advertising.  Although  these  idle  rich  ex- 
hibit themselves  most  openly  and  to  least  ad- 
vantage in  Paris  and  in  London,  their  foolish 
doings  are  recorded  superabundantly  in  our 
own  newspapers;  and  their  demoralizing  in- 
fluence is  spread  abroad.  The  snobbish  report 
of  their  misguided  attempts  at  amusement  may 
even  be  a  source  of  danger  in  that  it  seems  to 
recognize  a  false  standard  of  social  success,  or 
in  that  it  may  excite  a  miserable  ambition  to 
emulate  these  pitiful  frivolities.  But  there  is  no 
need  of  delaying  longer  over  the  idle  rich ;  they 
are  only  a  few,  and  they  have  doomed  them- 
selves to  destruction,  since  it  is  an  inexorable 
fact  that  those  who  break  the  laws  of  nature 
can  have  no  hope  of  executive  clemency. 

"  Patience  a  little ;  learn  to  wait, 
Years  are  long  on  the  clock  of  Fate." 


Z2 


^^^  Jimetican 

The  second  charge  which  the  wandering  Pari-  Character 
sian  journalist  brought  against  us  was  that  we 
ignore  the  arts  and  that  we  despise  disinter- 
ested beauty.  Here  again  the  answer  that  is 
easiest  is  not  altogether  satisfactory.  There  is 
no  difficulty  in  declaring  that  there  are  Ameri- 
can artists,  both  painters  and  sculptors,  who 
have  gained  the  most  cordial  appreciation  in 
Paris  itself,  or  in  drawing  attention  to  the  fact 
that  certain  of  the  minor  arts  —  that  of  the  sil- 
versmith, for  one,  and  for  another,  that  of  the 
glass-blower  and  the  glass-cutter— flourish  in 
the  United  States  at  least  as  richly  as  they  do 
anywhere  else,  while  the  art  of  designing  in 
stained  glass  has  had  a  new  birth  here,  which 
has  given  it  a  vigorous  vitality  lacking  in  Eu- 
rope since  the  Middle  Ages.  It  would  not  be 
hard  to  show  that  our  American  architects  are 
now  undertaking  to  solve  new  problems  wholly 
unknown  to  the  builders  of  Europe,  and  that 
they  are  often  succeeding  in  this  grapple  with 
unprecedented  difficulty.  Nor  would  it  take 
long  to  draw  up  a  list  of  the  concerted  efforts 
of  certain  of  our  cities  to  make  themselves 
more  worthy  and  more  sightly  with  parks  well 
planned  and  with  public  buildings  well  pro- 
portioned and  appropriately  decorated.  We 

13 


Jlmctican  y/Tnight  even  invoke  the  memory  of  the  evanes- 
Ctjatactet]  cent  loveliness  of  the  "White  City"  that  graced 
the  shores  of  Lake  Michigan  a  few  years  ago; 
and  we  might  draw  attention  again  to  the  Li- 
brary of  Congress,  a  later  triumph  of  the  al- 
lied arts  of  the  architect,  the  sculptor  and  the 
painter. 

But  however  full  of  high  hope  for  the  future 
we  may  esteem  these  several  instances  of  our 
reaching  out  for  beauty,  we  must  admit — if  we 
are  honest  with  ourselves— that  they  are  all 
more  or  less  exceptional,  and  that  to  offset  this 
list  of  artistic  achievements  the  Devil's  Advo- 
cate could  bring  forward  a  damning  catalog  of 
crimes  against  good  taste  which  would  go  far 
to  prove  that  the  feeling  for  beauty  is  dead 
here  in  America  and  also  the  desire  for  it.  The 
Devil's  Advocate  would  bid  us  consider  the 
flaring  and  often  vulgar  advertisements  that 
disfigure  our  highways,  the  barbaric  ineptness 
of  many  of  our  public  buildings,  the  squalor  of 
the  outskirts  of  our  towns  and  villages,  the 
hideousness  and  horror  of  the  slums  in  most 
of  our  cities,  the  negligent  toleration  of  dirt 
and  disorder  in  our  public  conveyances,  and 
many  another  pitiable  deficiency  of  our  civili- 
zation present  in  the  minds  of  all  of  us. 
The  sole  retort  possible  is  a  plea  of  confession 
14 


and  avoidance,  coupled  with  a  promise  of  re-  J^meticatl 
formation.  These  evils  are  evident  and  they  Ctjatactct 
cannot  be  denied.  But  they  are  less  evident  to- 
day than  they  were  yesterday;  and  we  may 
honestly  hope  that  they  will  be  less  evident  to- 
morrow. The  bare  fact  that  they  have  been  ob- 
served warrants  the  belief  that  unceasing  ef- 
fort will  be  made  to  do  away  with  them.  Once 
aroused,  public  opinion  will  work  its  will  in 
due  season.  And  here  occasion  serves  to  deny 
boldly  the  justice  of  a  part  of  the  accusation 
which  the  French  reporter  brought  against  us. 
It  may  be  true  that  we  "ignore  the  arts,"— al- 
though this  is  an  obvious  overstatement  of  the 
case;  but  it  is  not  true  that  we  despise  beauty. 
However  ignorant  the  American  people  may 
be  as  a  whole,  they  are  in  no  sense  hostile  to- 
ward art— as  certain  other  people  seem  to  be. 
On  the  contrary,  they  welcome  it ;  with  all  their 
ignorance,  they  are  anxious  to  understand  it; 
they  are  pathetically  eager  for  it.  They  are  so 
desirous  of  it  that  they  want  it  in  a  hurry,  only 
too  often  to  find  themselves  put  off  with  an 
empty  imitation.  But  the  desire  itself  is  indis- 
putable; and  its  accomplishment  is  likely  to  be 
helped  along  by  the  constant  commingling  here 
of  peoples  from  various  other  stocks  than  the 
Anglo-Saxon,  since  the  mixture  of  races  tends 

15 


^tnetican    always  to  a  swifter  artistic  development. 

(Character  It  is  well  to  probe  deeper  into  the  question 
and  to  face  the  fact  that  not  only  in  the  arts 
but  also  in  the  sciences  we  are  not  doing  all 
that  may  fairly  be  expected  of  us.  Athens  was 
a  trading  city  as  New  York  is,  but  New  York 
has  had  no  Sophocles  and  no  Phidias.  Flor- 
ence and  Venice  were  towns  whose  merchants 
were  princes,  but  no  American  city  has  yet 
brought  forth  a  Giotto,  a  Dante,  a  Titian.  It 
is  now  nearly  threescore  years  and  ten  since 
Emerson  delivered  his  address  on  the  "Ameri- 
can Scholar,"  which  has  well  been  styled  our 
intellectual  Declaration  of  Independence,  and 
in  which  he  expressed  the  hope  that  "perhaps 
the  time  is  already  come  .  .  .  when  the  slug- 
gard intellect  of  this  continent  will  look  from 
under  its  iron  lids  and  fulfil  the  postponed  ex- 
pectation of  the  world  with  something  better 
than  the  exertions  of  a  mechanical  skill."  Nearly 
seventy  years  ago  was  this  prophecy  uttered 
which  still  echoes  unaccomplished. 

In  the  nineteenth  century  in  which  we  came 
to  maturity  as  a  nation,  no  one  of  the  chief 
leaders  of  art,  even  including  literature  in  its 
broadest  aspects,  and  no  oneof  the  chief  leaders 
in  science,  was  native  to  our  country.  Perhaps 
we  may  claim  that  Webster  was  one  of  the 
z6 


world^s  greatest  orators  and  that  Parkman  was  Jlmctican 
one  of  the  world's  greatest  historians;  but  Character 
probably  the  world  outside  of  the  United  States 
would  be  found  unprepared  and  unwilling  to 
admit  either  claim,  however  likely  it  may  be 
to  win  acceptance  in  the  future.  Lincoln  is  in- 
disputably one  of  the  world's  greatest  states- 
men; and  his  fame  is  now  firmly  established 
throughout  the  whole  of  civilization.  But  this 
is  all  we  can  assert ;  and  we  cannot  deny  that 
we  have  given  birth  to  very  few  indeed  of  the 
foremost  poets,  dramatists,  novelists,  painters, 
sculptors,  architects  or  scientific  discoverers 
of  the  last  hundred  years. 
Alfred  Russel  Wallace,  whose  renown  is 
linked  with  Darwin's  and  whose  competence 
as  a  critic  of  scientific  advance  is  beyond  dis- 
pute, has  declared  that  the  nineteenth  century 
was  the  most  wonderful  of  all  since  the  world 
began.  He  asserts  that  the  scientific  achieve- 
ments of  the  last  hundred  years,  both  in  the 
discovery  of  general  principles  and  in  their 
practical  application,  exceed  in  number  the 
sum  total  of  the  scientific  achievements  to  be 
credited  to  all  the  centuries  that  went  before. 
He  considers,  first  of  all,  the  practical  applica- 
tions, which  made  the  aspect  of  civilization  in 
X900  differ  in  a  thousand  ways  from  what  it  had 

17 


Jimetican  been  in  1801.  He  names  a  dozen  of  these  prac- 
C^atactet  tical  applications:  railways,  steam  navigation, 
the  electric  telegraph,  the  telephone,  friction- 
matches,  gas-lighting,  electric  lighting,  the 
photograph,  the  Roentgen  rays,  spectrum  an- 
alysis, anesthetics,  and  antiseptics.  It  is  with 
pride  that  an  American  can  check  off  not  a  few 
of  these  utilities  as  being  due  wholly  or  in  large 
part  to  the  ingenuity  of  one  or  another  of  his 
countrymen. 
But  his  pride  has  a  fall  when  Wallace  draws 
up  a  second  list  not  of  mere  inventions  but  of 
these  fundamental  discoveries,  of  those  fecun- 
dating theories  underlying  all  practical  appli- 
cations and  making  them  possible,  of  those 
principles  "which  have  extended  our  know- 
ledge or  widened  our  conceptions  of  the  uni- 
verse." Of  these  he  catalogs  twelve;  and  we 
are  pained  to  find  that  no  American  has  had 
an  important  share  in  the  establishment  of  any 
of  these  broad  generalizations.  We  may  have 
added  a  little  here  and  there;  but  no  single  one 
of  all  the  twelve  discoveries  is  mainly  to  be 
credited  to  any  American.  It  seems  as  if  our 
French  critic  was  not  so  far  out  when  he  as- 
serted that  we  were  "terribly  practical."  In  the 
application  of  principles,  in  the  devising  of  new 
methods,  our  share  was  larger  than  that  of  any 
18 


other  nation.  In  the  working  out  of  the  stimu-  American 
lating  principles  themselves,  our  share  was  Ctjatactct 
less  than  "a  younger  brother's  portion." 
It  is  only  fair  to  say,  however,  that  even  though 
we  may  not  have  brought  forth  a  chief  leader  of 
art  or  of  science  to  adorn  the  wonderful  cen- 
tury, there  are  other  evidences  of  our  practical 
sagacity  than  those  set  down  by  Wallace,  evi- 
dences more  favorable  and  of  better  augury  for 
our  future.  We  derived  our  language  and  our 
laws,  our  public  justice  and  our  representative 
government,  from  our  English  ancestors,  as 
we  derived  from  the  Dutch  our  religious  tol- 
eration and  perhaps  also  our  large  freedom  of 
educational  opportunity.  In  our  time  we  have 
set  an  example  to  others  and  helped  along  the 
progress  of  the  world.  President  Eliot  holds 
that  we  have  made  five  important  contribu- 
tions to  the  advancement  of  civilization.  First 
of  all,  we  have  done  more  than  any  other  peo- 
ple to  further  peace-keeping,  and  to  substitute 
legal  arbitration  for  the  brute  conflict  of  war. 
Second,  we  have  set  a  splendid  example  of  the 
broadest  religious  toleration,  —  even  though 
Holland  had  first  shown  us  how.  Third,  we 
have  made  evident  the  wisdom  of  universal 
manhood  suffrage.  Fourth,  by  our  welcoming 
of  new-comers  from  all  parts  of  the  earth,  we 

19 


IMmetican  have  proved  that  men  belonging  to  a  great 
Character  variety  of  races  are  fit  for  political  freedom. 
Finally,  we  have  succeeded  in  diffusing  mate- 
rial well-being  among  the  whole  population  to 
an  extent  without  parallel  in  any  other  coun- 
try in  the  world. 

These  five  American  contributions  to  civili- 
zation are  all  of  them  the  result  of  the  practi- 
cal side  of  the  American  character.  They  may 
even  seem  commonplace  as  compared  with  the 
conquering  exploits  of  some  other  races.  But 
they  are  more  than  merely  practical;  they  are 
all  essentially  moral.  As  President  Eliot  in- 
sists, they  are  "triumphs  of  reason,  enterprise, 
courage,  faith  and  justice  over  passion,  self- 
ishness, inertness,  timidity,  and  distrust.  Be- 
neath each  of  these  developments  there  lies  a 
strong  ethical  sentiment,  a  strenuous  moral 
and  social  purpose.  It  is  for  such  work  that 
multitudinous  democracies  are  fit." 

IV 

A  "strong  ethical  sentiment"  and  a  "strenu- 
ous moral  purpose"  cannot  flourish  unless  they 
are  deeply  rooted  to  idealism.  And  here  we 
find  an  adequate  answer  to  the  third  assertion 
of  Tolstoi's  visitor,  who  maintained  that  we 
are  "hostile  to  all  idealism."  Our  idealism  may 

20 


be  of  a  practical  sort,  but  it  is  idealism  none  J(metican 
the  less.  Emerson  was  an  idealist,  although  Character 
he  was  also  a  thrifty  Yankee.  Lincoln  was 
an  idealist,  even  if  he  was  also  a  practical  poli- 
tician, an  opportunist,  knowing  where  he 
wanted  to  go,  but  never  crossing  a  bridge  be- 
fore he  came  to  it.  Emerson  and  Lincoln  had 
ever  a  firm  grip  on  the  facts  of  life;  each  of 
them  kept  his  gaze  fixed  on  the  stars,— and 
he  also  kept  his  feet  firm  on  the  soil. 
There  is  a  sham  idealism,  boastful  and  shabby, 
which  stares  at  the  moon  and  stumbles  in  the 
mud,  as  Shelley  did  and  Poe  also.  But  the  basis 
of  the  highest  genius  is  always  a  broad  com- 
mon sense.  Shahspet-e  and  Moliere  were  held 
in  esteem  by  their  comrades  for  their  under- 
standing of  affairs ;  and  they  each  of  them  had 
money  out  at  interest.  Sophocles  was  entrusted 
with  command  in  battle;  and  Goethe  was  the 
shrewdest  of  the  Grand  Duke's  counsellors. 
The  idealism  of  Shakspere  and  of  Molifere,  of 
Sophocles  and  of  Goethe,  is  like  that  of  Emer- 
son and  of  Lincoln ;  it  is  unfailingly  practical. 
And  thereby  it  is  sharply  set  apart  from  the 
aristocratic  idealism  of  Plato  and  of  Renan, 
of  Ruskin  and  of  Nietzsche,  which  is  founded 
on  obvious  self-esteem  and  which  is  sustained 
by  arrogant  and  inexhaustible  egotism.  True 


^metican  idealism  is  not  only  practical,  it  is  also  liberal 

Ctjatactet  and  tolerant. 

Perhaps  it  might  seem  to  be  claiming  too 
much  to  insist  on  certain  points  of  similarity 
between  us  and  the  Greeks  of  old.  The  points 
of  dissimilarity  are  only  too  evident  to  most 
of  us;  and  yet  there  is  a  likeness  as  well  as  an 
unlikeness.  Professor  Butcher  has  recently 
asserted  that  "no  people  was  ever  less  de- 
tached from  the  practical  affairs  of  life"  than 
the  Greeks,  "less  insensible  to  outward  utility; 
yet  they  regarded  prosperity  as  a  means,  never 
as  an  end.  The  unquiet  spirit  of  gain  did  not 
take  possession  of  their  souls.  Shrewd  traders 
and  merchants,  they  were  yet  idealists.  They 
did  not  lose  sight  of  the  higher  and  distinc- 
tively human  aims  which  give  life  its  signifi- 
cance." It  will  be  well  for  us  if  this  can  be  said 
of  our  civilization  two  thousand  years  after  its 
day  is  done;  and  it  is  for  us  to  make  sure  that 
"the  unquiet  spirit  of  gain"  shall  not  take  pos- 
session of  our  souls.  It  is  for  us  also  to  rise  to 
the  attitude  of  the  Greeks,  among  whom,  as 
Professor  Butcher  points  out,  "money  lavished 
on  personal  enjoyment  was  counted  vulgar, 
oriental,  inhuman." 

There  is  comfort  in  the  memory  of  Lincoln  and 
of  those  whose  death  on  the  field  of  Gettys- 


burg  he  commemorated.  The  men  who  there  ^imetican 
gave  up  their  lives  that  the  country  might  live  (ZfjatactCt 
had  answered  to  the  call  of  patriotism,  which 
is  one  of  the  sublimest  images  of  idealism. 
There  is  comfort  also  in  the  recollection  of 
Emerson,  and  in  the  fact  that  for  many  of  the 
middle  years  of  the  nineteenth  century  he  was 
the  most  popular  of  lecturers,  with  an  unfad- 
ing attractiveness  to  the  plain  people,  per- 
haps, because,  in  Lowell's  fine  phrase,  he 
"kept  constantly  burning  the  beacon  of  an 
ideal  life  above  the  lower  region  of  turmoil." 
There  is  comfort  again  in  the  knowledge  that 
idealism  is  one  manifestation  of  imagination, 
and  that  imagination  itself  is  but  an  intenser 
form  of  energy.  That  we  have  energy  and  to 
spare,  no  one  denies;  and  we  may  reckon  him 
a  nearsighted  observer  who  does  not  see  also 
that  we  have  our  full  share  of  imagination, 
even  though  it  has  not  yet  expressed  itself  in 
the  loftiest  regions  of  art  and  of  science.  The 
outlook  is  hopeful,  and  it  is  not  true  that 

"We,  like  sentries,  are  obliged  to  stand 
In  starless  nights  and  wait  the  appointed  hour." 

The  foundations  of  our  commonwealth  were 
laid  by  the  sturdy  Elizabethans  who  bore 
across  the  ocean  with  them  their  having  of  that 
imagination  which  in  England  flamed  up  in 

23 


Jitnetican  rugged  prose  and  in  superb  and  soaring  verse. 

Character  In  two  centuries  and  a  half  the  sons  of  these 
stalwart  Englishmen  have  lost  nothing  of  their 
ability  to  see  visions  and  to  dream  dreams, 
and  to  put  solid  foundations  under  their  castles 
in  the  air.  The  flame  may  seem  to  die  down 
for  a  season,  but  it  springs  again  from  the 
embers  most  unexpectedly,  as  it  broke  forth 
furiously  in  1861.  There  was  imagination  at  the 
core  of  the  little  war  for  the  freeing  of  Cuba,  — 
the  very  attack  on  Spain,  which  the  Parisian 
journalist  cited  to  Tolstoi  as  the  proof  of  our 
predatory  aggressiveness.  We  said  that  we 
were  going  to  war  for  the  sake  of  the  ill-used 
people  in  the  suffering  island  close  to  our 
shores ;  we  said  that  we  would  not  annex  Cuba ; 
we  did  the  fighting  that  was  needful ;  —  and  we 
kept  our  word.  It  is  hard  to  see  how  even  the 
most  bitter  of  critics  can  discover  in  this  any- 
thing selfish. 

There  was  imagination  also  in  the  sudden 
stopping  of  all  the  steamcraft,  of  all  the  rail- 
roads, of  all  the  street-cars,  of  all  the  incessant 
traffic  of  the  whole  nation,  at  the  moment  when 
the  body  of  a  murdered  chief  magistrate  was 
lowered  into  the  grave.  This  pause  in  the  work 
of  the  world  was  not  only  touching,  it  had  a 
large  significance  to  any  one  seeking  to  under- 
24 


stand  the  people  of  these  United  States.  It  was  ^metican 
a  testimony  that  the  Greeks  would  have  appre-  (Ztjatactet 
dated;  it  had  the  bold  simplicity  of  an  Attic 
inscription.  And  we  would  thrill  again  in  sym- 
pathetic response  if  it  was  in  the  pages  of  Plu- 
tarch that  we  read  the  record  of  another  in- 
stance: When  the  time  arrived  for  Admiral 
Sampson  to  surrender  the  command  of  the 
fleet  he  had  brought  back  to  Hampton  Roads, 
he  came  on  deck  to  meet  there  only  those  of- 
ficers whose  prescribed  duty  required  them  to 
take  part  in  the  farewell  ceremonies  as  set 
forth  in  the  regulations.  But  when  he  went  over 
the  side  of  the  flagship  he  found  that  the  boat 
which  was  to  bear  him  ashore  was  manned  by 
the  rest  of  the  officers  ready  to  row  him  them- 
selves and  eager  to  render  this  last  personal 
service;  and  then  from  every  other  ship  of  the 
fleet  there  put  out  a  boat  also  manned  by  of- 
ficers, to  escort  for  the  last  time  the  commander 
whom  they  loved  and  honored. 

V 

As  another  illustration  of  our  regard  for  the 
finer  and  loftier  aspects  of  life,  consider  our 
parks,  set  apart  for  the  use  of  the  people  by 
the  city,  the  state  and  the  nation.  In  the  cities 
of  this  new  country  the  public  playgrounds 

25 


^mctican  have  had  to  be  made,  the  most  of  them,  and  at 
(Character  high  cost,  — whereas  the  towns  of  the  Old 
World  have  come  into  possession  of  theirs  for 
nothing,  more  often  than  not,  inheriting  the 
private  recreation-grounds  of  their  rulers.  And 
Europe  has  little  or  nothing  to  show  similar 
either  to  the  reservations  of  certain  states,  like 
the  steadily  enlarging  preserves  in  the  Cats- 
kills  and  the  Adirondacks,  or  to  the  ampler 
national  parks,  the  Yellowstone,  the  Yosemite 
and  the  Grand  Canyon  of  the  Colorado,  some 
of  them  far  larger  in  area  than  one  at  least  of 
the  original  thirteen  states.  Overcoming  the 
pressure  of  private  greed,  the  people  have  or- 
dained the  preservation  of  this  natural  beauty 
and  its  protection  for  all  time  under  the  safe 
guardianship  of  the  nation  and  with  free  access 
to  all  who  may  claim  admission  to  enjoy  it. 
In  like  manner  many  of  the  battlefields,  where- 
on the  nation  spent  its  blood  that  it  might  be 
what  it  is  and  what  it  hopes  to  be,  —these  have 
been  taken  over  by  the  nation  itself  and  set 
apart  and  kept  as  holy  places  of  pilgrimage. 
They  are  free  from  the  despoiling  hand  of  any 
individual  owner.  They  are  adorned  with  monu- 
ments recording  the  brave  deeds  of  the  men 
who  fought  there.  They  serve  as  constant  re- 
minders of  the  duty  we  owe  to  our  country  and 
26 


of  the  debt  we  owe  to  those  who  made  it  and  Jlmctican 
who  saved  it  for  us.  And  the  loyal  veneration  (Z^dtactCt 
with  which  these  fields  of  blood  have  been 
cherished  here  in  the  United  States  finds  no 
counterpart  in  any  country  in  Europe,  no  mat- 
ter how  glorious  may  be  its  annals  of  military 
prowess.  Even  Waterloo  is  in  private  hands; 
and  its  broad  acres,  enriched  by  the  bones  of 
thousands,  are  tilled  every  year  by  the  indus- 
trious Belgian  farmers.  Yet  it  was  a  French- 
man, Renan,  who  told  us  that  what  welds  men 
into  a  nation,  is  "  the  memory  of  great  deeds 
done  in  common  and  the  will  to  accomplish 
yet  more." 

According  to  the  theory  of  the  conservation  of 
energy,  there  ought  to  be  about  as  much  virtue 
in  the  world  at  one  time  as  at  another.  Accord- 
ing to  the  theory  of  the  survival  of  the  fittest, 
there  ought  to  be  a  little  more  now  than  there 
was  a  century  ago.  We  Americans  to-day  have 
our  faults,  and  they  are  abundant  enough  and 
blatant  enough,  and  foreigners  take  care  that 
we  shall  not  overlook  them;  but  our  ethical 
standard  — however  imperfectly  we  may  attain 
to  it —is  higher  than  that  of  the  Greeks  under 
Pericles,  of  the  Romans  under  Caesar,  of  the 
English  under  Elizabeth.  It  is  higher  even 
than  that  of  our  forefathers  who  established 

27 


!^tnetican    our  freedom,  as  those  know  best  who  have 

(ZfjatactCt    most  carefully  inquired  into  the  inner  history 

of  the  American  Revolution.  In  nothing  was 

our  advance  more  striking  than  in  the  different 

\        treatment  meted  out  to  the  vanquished  after 

the  Revolution  and  after  the  Civil  War.  When 

we  made  our  peace  with  the  British  the  native 

tories  were  proscribed,  and  thousands  of  loyal- 

•  ists  left  the  United  States  to  carry  into  Canada 

the  indurated  hatred  of  the  exiled.  But  after 

Lee's  surrender  at  Appomattox,  no  body  of 

men,  no  single  man  indeed,  was  driven  forth 

to  live  an  alien  for  the  rest  of  his  days;  even 

though  a  few  might  choose  to  go,  none  were 

compelled. 

This  change  of  conduct  on  the  part  of  those 
who  were  victors  in  the  struggle  was  evidence 
of  an  increasing  sympathy.  Not  only  is  section- 
alism disappearing,  but  with  it  is  departing  the 
feeling  that  really  underlies  it,  —  the  distrust  of 
those  who  dwell  elsewhere  than  where  we  do. 
This  distrust  is  common  all  over  Europe  to- 
day. Here  in  America  it  has  yielded  to  a  friendly 
neighborliness  which  makes  the  family  from 
Portland,  Maine,  soon  find  itself  at  home  in 
Portland,  Oregon.  It  is  getting  hard  for  us  to 
hate  anybody,— especially  since  we  have  dis- 
established the  devil.  We  are  good-natured  and 
28 


easy-going;  Herbert  Spencer  even  denounced  Jimctican 
this  as  our  immediate  danger,  maintaining  that  (Z^atactet 
we  were  too  good-natured,  too  easy-going,  too 
tolerant  of  evil ;  and  he  insisted  that  we  needed 
tostrengthenourwills  to  protest  againstwrong 
and  to  wrestle  with  it  resolutely,  and  to  over- 
come before  it  is  firmly  rooted. 


VI 

We  are  kindly  and  we  are  helpful ;  and  we  are 
fixed  in  the  belief  that  somehow  everything  will 
work  out  all  right  in  the  long  run.  But  nothing 
will  work  out  all  right  unless  we  so  make  it 
work ;  and  excessive  optimism  may  be  as  cor- 
rupting to  the  fiber  of  the  people  as  "the  Sab-  / 
bathless  pursuit  of  fortune,"  as  Bacon  termed 
it.  When  Mr.  John  Morley  was  last  in  this 
country  he  seized  swiftly  upon  a  chance  allu- 
sion of  mine  to  this  ingrained  hopefulness  of 
ours.  "Ah,  what  you  call  optimism,"  he  cried, 
"I  call  fatalism."  But  an  optimism  which  is  sol- 
idly based  on  a  survey  of  the  facts  cannot  fairly 
be  termed  fatalism;  and  another  British  stu- 
dent of  political  science,  Mr.  James  Bryce,  has 
recently  pointed  out  that  the  intelligent  native 
American  has— and  by  experience  is  justified 
in  having— a  firm  conviction  that  the  majority 
of  qualified  voters  are  pretty  sure  to  be  right. 

29         / 


Jimetican  Then  he  suggested  a  reason  for  the  faith  that 
C^atactet  is  in  us,  when  he  declared  that  no  such  feeling 
exists  in  Europe,  since  in  Germany  the  gov- 
erning class  dreads  the  spread  of  socialism,  in 
France  the  republicans  know  that  it  is  not  im- 
possible that  Monarchism  and  Clericalism  may 
succeed  in  upsetting  the  Republic,  while  in 
Great  Britain  each  party  believes  that  the  other 
party,  when  it  succeeds,  succeeds  by  mislead- 
ing the  people,  and  neither  party  supposes  that 
the  majority  are  any  more  likely  to  be  right 
than  to  be  wrong. 
Mr.  Morley  and  Mr.  Bryce  were  both  here  in 
the  United  States  in  the  fall  of  1904,  when  we 
were  in  the  midst  of  a  presidential  election, 
one  of  those  prolonged  national  debates,  cre- 
ating incessant  commotion,  but  invaluable 
agents  of  our  political  education,  in  so  far  as 
they  force  us  all  to  take  thought  about  the  un- 
derlying principles  of  policy  by  which  we  wish 
to  see  the  government  guided.  It  was  while 
this  political  campaign  was  at  its  height  that 
the  French  visitor  to  the  Russian  novelist  was 
setting  his  notes  in  order  and  copying  out  his 
assertion  that  we  Americans  were  mere  money- 
grubbers,  "systematically  hostile  to  all  ideal- 
ism." If  this  unthinking  Parisian  journalist 
had  only  taken  the  trouble  to  consider  the  ad- 
30 


dresses  which  the  chief  speakers  of  the  two  ^mctican 
parties  here  in  the  United  States  were  then  Cfjatactet 
making  to  their  fellow-citizens  in  the  hope  of 
winning  votes,  he  would  have  discovered  that 
these  practical  politicians,  trained  to  perceive 
the  subtler  shades  of  popular  feeling,  were 
founding  all  their  arguments  on  the  assumption 
that  the  American  people  as  a  whole  wanted 
to  do  right.  He  would  have  seen  that  the  ap- 
peal of  these  stalwart  partisans  was  rarely  to 
prejudice  or  to  race-hatred,  —  evil  spirits  that 
various  orators  have  sought  to  arouse  and  to 
intensify  in  the  more  recent  political  discussion 
of  the  French  themselves. 
An  examination  of  the  platforms,  of  the  let- 
ters of  the  candidates,  and  of  the  speeches  of 
the  more  important  leaders  on  both  sides  re- 
vealed to  an  American  observer  the  significant 
fact  that  "each  party  tried  to  demonstrate  that 
it  was  more  peaceable,  more  equitable,  more 
sincerely  devoted  to  lawful  and  righteous  be- 
havior than  the  other;"  and  "the  voter  was  in- 
stinctively credited  with  loving  peace  and 
righteousness,  and  with  being  stirred  by  sen- 
timents of  good-will  toward  men."  This  seems 
to  show  that  the  heart  of  the  people  is  sound, 
and  that  it  does  not  throb  in  response  to  ig- 
noble appeals.  It  seems  to  show  that  there  is 

31 


^mctican    here  the  desire  ever  to  do  right  and  to  see  right 

Ctjatactet    done,  even  if  the  will  is  weakened  a  little  by 

easy-going  good-nature,  and  even  if  the  will 

fails  at  times  to  stiffen  itself  resolutely  to  make 

sure  that  the  right  shall  prevail. 

"Liberty  hath  a  sharp  and  double  edge  fit 
only  to  be  handled  by  just  and  virtuous  men," 
so  Milton  asserted  long  ago,  adding  that  "to 
the  bad  and  dissolute,  it  becomes  a  mischief 
unwieldy  in  their  own  hands."  Even  if  we 
Americans  can  clear  ourselves  of  being  "  bad 
and  dissolute,"  we  have  much  to  do  before  we 
may  claim  to  be  "just  and  virtuous."  Justice 
and  virtue  are  not  to  be  had  for  the  asking; 
they  are  the  rewards  of  a  manful  contest  with 
selfishness  and  with  sloth.  They  are  the  re- 
sults of  an  honest  effort  to  think  straight,  and 
to  apply  eternal  principles  to  present  needs. 
Merely  to  feel  is  only  the  beginning;  what  re- 
mains is  to  think  and  to  act. 
A  British  historian,  Mr.  Frederic  Harrison, 
who  came  here  to  spy  out  the  land  three  or 
four  years  before  Mr.  Morley  and  Mr.  Bryce 
last  visited  us,  was  struck  by  the  fact—  and 
by  the  many  consequences  of  the  fact  — that 
"America  is  the  only  land  on  earth  where 
caste  has  never  had  a  footing,  nor  has  left  a 
trace."  It  seemed  to  him  that  "vast  numbers 
32 


and  the  passion  of  equality  tend  to  low  aver-  !Mmctican 
ages  in  thought,  in  manners,  and  in  public  Character 
opinion,  which  the  zeal  of  the  devoted  minor-  ' 
ity  tends  gradually  to  raise  to  higher  planes 
of  thought  and  conduct."  He  believed  that  we"^ 
should  solve  our  problems  one  by  one  because 
"the  zeal  for  learning,  justice  and  humanity" 
lies  deep  in  the  American  heart.  Mr.  Harrison 
did  not  say  it  in  so  many  words,  but  it  is  im- 
plied in  what  he  did  say,  that  the  absence  of 
caste  and  the  presence  of  low  averages  in 
thought,  in  manners,  and  in  public  opinion 
impose  a  heavier  task  on  the  devoted  minor- 
ity, whose  duty  it  is  to  keep  alive  the  zeal  for 
learning,  justice  and  humanity.  / 

Which  of  us,  if  haply  the  spirit  moves  him, 
may  not  elect  himself  to  this  devoted  minor- 
ity? Why  should  not  we  also,  each  in  our  own 
way,  without  pretense,  without  boastfulness, 
without  bullying,  do  whatsoever  in  us  lies  for 
the  attainment  of  justice  and  of  virtue?  It  is 
well  to  be  a  gentleman  and  a  scholar;  but  after 
all  it  is  best  to  be  a  man,  ready  to  do  a  man's 
work  in  the  world.  And  indeed  there  is  no  rea- 
son why  a  gentleman  and  a  scholar  should  not 
also  be  a  man.  He  will  need  to  cherish  what 
Huxley  called  "that  enthusiasm  for  truth,  that  x 
fanaticism  for  veracity,  which  is  a  greater  pos- 

33 


Jimctican  session  than  much  learning,  a  nobler  gift  than 
(Z^atactet  the  power  of  increasing  knowledge."  He  will 
need  also  to  remember  that 

**  Kings  have  their  dynasties,  —  but  not  the  mind ; 
Caesar  leaves  other  Caesars  to  succeed, 
But  Wisdom,  dying,  leaves  no  heir  behind." 


ms 


,^  VB  20489 


M.^- 


